Leonid Nikolaev

Leonid Nikolaev (1904-29 December 1934) was a Bolshevik assassin who killed Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov in 1934, starting the Great Purge.

Biography
Leonid Nikolaev was born in 1904 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire. He was only five feet tall and was a troubled person, being expelled from the Bolsheviks after refusing to do a job assigned to him and being repeatedly reprimanded. In 1934, he was given a chance to recover lost pride by Bolshevik leader Joseph Stalin when he was sent to assassinate Leningrad party leader Sergey Kirov, with whom his wife Milda Draule was having an affair. He shot him in the back of the neck with a revolver, but Stalin betrayed and arrested him. On 29 December 1934, Nikolaev was executed by firing squad, and his mother, brother, sisters, cousin, close friends, and Draule were all executed soon after in the ensuing Great Purge.